Rolling Metal Thread 2010

thx to local booking hero Swordlord Productions, ive seen all of the listed bands playing that weekend other than Swallow the Sun and Holy Grail. and yes, finntroll and moonsorrow are pretty awesome live.

xpost: yeah i cant say enough good things about that ihsahn record, its amazing

also lj since you are around this thread, im going to take this opportunity to reiterate that i think you would go completely nuts over the sleepytime stuff from what i know about yer tastes

Is the Negura Bunget out yet?

Understood, JJ. You're not the only person to tell me that!

I told him years ago, so did abbott I think.

Also I think this has also been pushed to LJ upthread but the first 2 tracks of the new Cathedral sound like the heaviest possible Yes with the wind sections of Van Der Graaf and Art Bears drafted in. Actually C. Squire-esque bass assertion throughout the album.

just tell him its not really metal so his mates wont slag him off and he will jump right in! ;)

Also I think this has also been pushed to LJ upthread but the first 2 tracks of the new Cathedral sound like the heaviest possible Yes with the wind sections of Van Der Graaf and Art Bears drafted in. Actually C. Squire-esque bass assertion throughout the album.

― Bonnie Prince Stabby (Jon Lewis), Thursday, April 1, 2010 1:33 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Holy Christ, count me in on that.

I haven't seen either Negura Bunget album in stores, but then I've never actually seen a Negura Bunget album in a store in person, regardless.

My only-one-from-2010 nomination would be down to HIM, Immolation, Ludicra, Rotting Christ and Triptykon. If you have no other metal, and are trying to make up for that, then Immolation may be the most definitively and contextlessly metal of those five. If you're looking for 1 metal album because that's as close as possible to 0 metal albums, then HIM is a joyous rock album with a fabulous goth-metal wardrobe.

I have to echo all the Ludicra and Triptykon recommendations. Armored Saint is right up there too.

The Cathedral album is so great. It's funny how I finally got around to listening to it right after that discussion on metal double albums. This just might be the best one I've heard.

Also, what the hell is Swashbuckle doing opening for Hypocrisy?

xpost in re: new Cathedral - also reminds me of the Strawbs

Oh, yeah, I forgot about the Immolation disc. That's another really good one.

OT: J0hn, when I see that "Twink Will Ferrell" moniker it makes me think he's starring in a Pink Fairies biopic.

i love immolation. i wanna hear the new one.

Nobody's mentioned Vasaeleth yet. That's the death metal album to grab, in my opinion.

Definitely have to chime in on the Immolation + Ludicra + Cathedral = best of 2010 so far.

I saw Moonsorrow live and was not as impressed as I'd hoped to be. It was a short set so they couldn't play anything off V though... I'd give them another shot under the right circumstances.

xp to JD-- Hmmm maybe I should listen to the Strawbs sumtime!

Of the vinyl we have at home, Grave New World is perhaps my favourite - it's fucking AWESOME

along with Warrior At The Edge Of Time

those albums were made to be heard on vinyl

So guys, if you were do a first quarter BEST OF METAL in '10, what albums make the cut?

My picks: Alcest, Armored Saint, Burzum, Cathedral, Daughters, High on Fire, Hour of 13, Ihsahn, Lair of the Minotaur, Les Discrets, Ludicra, Nachtmystium, Nevermore, Overkill, Ratt, Shining (NOR), Triptykon, Vasaeleth, Yakuza.

Nachtmystium isn't out until june?

Well yeah, I was just going by what I've heard in the first three months. It's hard for me to figure out what came out before April, so I cheated a bit.

My favorites of the first quarter, in rough order:

Ihsahn
High On Fire
Ludicra
Orphaned Land
Burzum
Landmine Marathon

Still need to get the Triptykon album and patiently waiting on hearing the LotM, Nachtmystium, and Alcest ones.

Also one very, very small justification for the continued existence of Hot Topic:

Was waiting to meet my wife and mother-in-law at a mall in Ann Arbor and wandered into the store to idly flip through the tiny music rack. I was shocked to find, mixed in with a truly frightening amount of A Day To Remember discs, a $7.99 copy of Death's Scream Bloody Gore.

First-quarter(ish) stuff I like: Armored Saint, Bison B.C. (not out yet), Cathedral (not out yet), High on Fire, Ihsahn, Ludicra, Ratt (not out yet), Shining (NOR), Triptykon.

Definitely anticipating that Bison B.C. album too!

was streaming the ihsahn earlier; i liked it but maybe a bit too "smooth" for me? forgot to look for ludicra, ended up buying no metal :(

back to the Fear Factory show of last night - I've become resigned to the fact that with a few exceptions, most metal shows I see are going to have a shitty melodic metalcore band opening.

I don't inherently dismiss the subgenre - I've always liked Killswitch Engage, and early Shadows Fall, but it seems to me that from what I've heard of the genre, there are way too many faceless acts. I'm not even really a fan of Darkest Hour.

I kind of expected we might get one yesterday, being that younger acts seem to be gravitating towards this. But the first opening act, Periphery, were baffling. They were a six piece (from what I could surmise, three guitars, bass, drums, vocalist), and most of the pre-verse riffs were copped right out of Meshuggah's Nothing - not an homage, but a pretty blatant ripoff. But the vocalist sounded like the guy from Dashboard Confessional and they had really lame melodic metalcore choruses. It was sooooooo boring. They had stunning technical abilities, but it was wasted.

The next act, Dirge Within, was worse, as they were hideously generic. The vocalist tried to incite a mosh pit but it never really materialized and I kind of wanted to say to the vocalist 'you're not really playing the right music for that'. Very few breakdowns, and not many 'moshy' riffs.

I guess I"ll never get this genre. I love metalcore aka Converge/Botch/Cave In, just not this stuff I guess. Any examples of really good melodic metalcore acts that are a cut above?

no

lol - well good to know it's not my ears then.

stick with Converge/Botch/Cave-In

cool. ok, I was gonna ask about that style too but there's a thread for that so I won't use this one for it.

heh it's probably just the same posters!

The vocalist tried to incite a mosh pit but it never really materialized and I kind of wanted to say to the vocalist 'you're not really playing the right music for that'.

man, this is always so embarrassing.

same thing goes for bands that want everyone to dance. it's like, "well, make us dance then. WITH YOUR MUSIC."

God Forbid is awesome and I will fight anybody who says otherwise

Exactly. Generally speaking, if you're a band playing mosh inducing music, and you're an opening act, the pits don't form until the second song. The pit mavens use the first song to gauge your style, so you should always play your biggest pit inducer second. Even though they're a 'melodic' death act, Dreaming Dead got the pit going by their second song despite few people in the audience knowing them.

The funniest example of a musician bitching about the lack of moshing was back when I saw Dillinger Escape Plan back in 2000. It was a bill featuring something like 5 other bands, and a group of young kids named Cerberos took the stage. All of them were decked out in atrocious corpsepaint that looked like it was put on by one of those minimum wage stooges at a kiddie carnival. One of them had a Cradle of Filth shirt on, so I figure "hmm this could be blackened thrash metal or something".

Nope. They start playing hookless three chord punk rock, with "black metal rasps" that sounded like Captain Caveman on top. At plodding tempos. The crowd is clearly amused by them, and half of us are sitting Indian style, and looking at our watches. Nobody is moshing. Nobody is moving. Nobody is having a good time.

So after the first song, the vocalist says, now in a voice that resembles Black Metal Beavis, "You guys should um, mosh or something". After the second song, nobody moshes, and he complains, in a blithe voice "You all need to mosh...OR I'LL KILL YOU!". A frightening threat, being that the kid was about 17 and weighed about 140 pounds, and holding a microphone.

Then, they cover the Misfits' "Die, Die My Darling"...and play it incorrectly. (They used the same chord progression in the verse that they did in the chorus, but the verse/chorus riffs are not identical in the original). At that point, booing commenced from some.

The last track, the drummer asks if everybody likes old school rap, and then begins to launch into a cheesy 80's style Young MC-esque rhyme, and then they bust into their shitty punk rock and never return to the rap.

And they had the nerve to wonder why nobody was moshing.

I actually like God Forbid, though I haven't heard them in ages. I saw them open for GWAR and they were solid.

If there was any justice in the world, God Forbid would be bigger than Killswitch Engage.

I liked Killswitch's older vocalist better than Howard Jones.

when they got him I was hoping it would be the 80's pop singer :(

what is metalcore love?

Baby don't hurt me

no one is to blame (for metalcore)

Metalcore Can Only Get better

(no it cant remix)

New Metalcore Song

Enjoying the two-song Embers preview that Cosmo stumped for on Invisible Oranges recently. Not quite as druidic as Wolves in the Throne Room or Blood of the Black Owl, but with a vaguely similar density.